Due to the complexity and asymmetrical illumination, the images of object are difficult to be effectively segmented by some routine method. In this paper, a kind of edge detection method based on image features and genetic algorithms neural network for range images was proposed. Fully considering the essential difference between an edge point and a noise point, some characteristic parameters were extracted from range maps as the input nodes of the network in the algorithm. Firstly, a genetic neural network was designed and implemented. The neural network is trained by genetic algorithm, and then genetic neural network algorithm is combined with the virtue of global optimization of genetic algorithm and the virtue of parallel computation of neural network, so that this algorithm is of good global property. The experimental results show that this method can get much faster and more accurate detection results than the classical differential algorithm, and has better anti-noise performance.